Search age:

Search in:

Sydney lawyer who got Lockerbie victims $10m says MH17 families could get the same

Tim Barlass

The aviation lawyer who helped negotiate $10 million in compensation from Libya for families of the Lockerbie disaster believes the same could be achieved by relatives of those killed on MH17.

Jerry Skinner, a co-associate of LHD Lawyers in Sydney but based in the US, said a united claim from all families of all nationalities in an international court against Malaysia and Malaysia Airlines could be used to leverage political pressure and secure significant remuneration instead of individuals pursuing damages.

He said with the Lockerbie bombing there were several international remedies put together in a creative way to allow the families to pursue recourse against a terrorist state.

''Something creative is going to have to be done here because this is too big and too complicated for the judicial system to handle on its own and it involves people who will not yield to the judicial system, such as the Russians and the Ukrainians,'' he said.

Advertisement

"What happened in Lockerbie was that politics got involved and sanctions got involved and we said to the Libyans, if you want to settle this, it doesn't matter what the individuals did [for a living].

"The parties that are the main participants here are probably the Russians and their allies and also Malaysia Airlines. Both of them bear a lot of responsibility for this."

Mr Skinner said that, despite likely loss of evidence at the centre of the crash site because of the Russian separatists, he believed the wreckage was spread over a sufficiently large area to obtain portions of the aircraft from which the chemical signature of the missile could be determined.

He also said he believed the surface-to-air missile system was probably too sophisticated to have been deployed by the separatists.

"My opinion is the Russians would not put this in the hands of their supporters," he said. "I suspect it was a trained technician that came along with it, not someone who was trained in the field. If you are placing the odds on who pulled the trigger, I don’t think a sheep herder who decided to become a freedom fighter did it. I think a Russian technical person did it."

Mr Skinner also said Malaysia Airlines should not be involved in the investigation.

"My opinion from Lockerbie and from seeing what happens as time passes is that the Malaysians should not be involved," he said. "They are an interested party.They don’t have the technical capability to even tell you where MH370 went, not to mention what happened with MH17. I think they should be excluded for conflict of interest.

"They have lost two aircraft in four months, one of which they still can’t find, and, while they are looking for it, they decide, and this is their operational management, to fly through a war zone where a nation state with very sophisticated weapons is fighting a war."

Subscribe to IT Pro

Editor's Choice

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has bolstered Malcolm Turnbull's ministerial duties, handing him greater responsibility for e-government in a push to expand the use of a single digital identity for Australians.

Data

The new roof that spans Margaret Court arena does more than keep out the weather. Built into the gantries that surround the sliding ceiling are Wi-Fi antennas that beam web access to every ticket holder.